Sunday, May 19, 2013

Memories Of Jasmine: The Lost Forest

Jasmine loved hikes in the woods.

She loved the woods in the winter, she loved it in the spring, she loved it in the fall. Summer was trickier with the woods full of mosquitoes. In the summer we'd typically go swimming. The place we liked to go to was fairly free of mosquitoes too.

On the days it wasn't too bad, natural sprays helped. The best one kept them off for about 20 minutes at the time before it had to be re-applied. I don't think one can really expect much more from such products. It was easy enough to spray everybody again.

We never skipped a treatment and we tested every spring. It takes only one mosquito to get a dog infected. We'd use heartworm prevention even if we weren't spending so much time in the woods but this way we were really very much aware of the risks.

Jasmine could spend a whole day in the woods.

Her idea of the perfect hike was the bipeds getting lost. And yes, it did happen couple of times. Once in a blizzard! We went out with her best buddy and his mom took us to an area she said she knew. She didn't expect what difference a good blizzard can make. We were walking around for good four hours before finding our way back.

Of course, Jasmine thought that was just fine.

I know she knew every time we made a wrong turn. She had that look on her face, "you sure you wanna go this way? Fine with me, I ain't stopping you."

It wasn't dark yet, we still had treats ...

I'm sure she would have gotten us home in time for dinner.

The second time I managed to get lost in the summer, taking the guys for a hike around the horse farm. It was a hot day and I was avoiding open areas with direct sun. With the challenging terrain, you go around this thing and another and you think you still know where you are ...

When it was time to go back, I took a direction which I thought was gonna take us back.

I saw a clearing, headed towards that.

Except ... it was a totally different meadow than it should have been! Where the heck were we?

I felt I still knew in which direction the farm should have been (and I was right, actually) and took path going that way. The path had horse poop on it, should take us to the horse farm, right? Except, somehow the path wiggled its way round and round and right back to where we started. It was like the Blair Witch Project!

And again, Jasmine was looking at me whether I was sure I wanted to go that way ... "If you insist ... I'm happy hanging around here as long as you want," her expression was saying.

We found a campground of sorts.

I didn't really know how big the area was and how much more lost we could or couldn't get. As much as Jasmine loved being lost in the woods (well, I was, she wasn't), I decided not to take any chances and get to the phone before we lost that also.

As it turned out, the name of the campground was Lost Forrest! I kid you not. If the whole forest could get lost in there, no wonder we did...

Hubby drove up to rescue us. Yeah, I got a GPS for my birthday that year ... And used it plenty.

I'm sure Jasmine would have gotten us home in time for dinner, though.

In her own time. Because she thought the bipeds getting lost was just awesome.

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